News Analysis
Jochen Decker is fully committed to AI for complex optimization projects to yield measurable cost benefits.
Railway construction couldn’t be more laborious than in Switzerland, as the country consists almost exclusively of mountains, most of which are now spanned with bridges and riddled with holes, like the famous local cheese.
The rail network is also the densest in Europe to the point where it can no longer be expanded because all the necessary areas are already fully utilized. “We can only optimize,” said Jochen Decker at the Hamburg IT Strategy Days in February. And this is urgently needed because Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) expects 30 to 40% more passengers in 2034 than today, putting that much additional strain on an unchanged route network. So Decker came to Hamburg to report on how it can be achieved, and show the central role that artificial intelligence will play.
Opportunities not realized before
SBB, unlike Deutsche Bahn, is an integrated group that brings together passenger and freight transport, infrastructure, and real estate under a single roof, which facilitates the planning and implementation of investments and innovations. The IT budget amounts to €850 million per year, which is about 7% of sales.
A few years ago, SBB prescribed three optimization programs that will cost around €1 billion by 2027. In terms of traffic management, the aim is to make better use of routes, in particular by reducing the distances between trains. Production planning wants to get more kilometers out of people and materials, ensuring that trains stand still as little as possible, and that train drivers spend as much of their working time as possible driving rather than on other things. The third part of the program, asset management, is intended to reduce material wear and tear, and make better use of the workshops.
